


The faithful

by Elesianne



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, First Age, Reembodiment, Reunions, Romance, a bit of angst, or rather building on the little canon we have about these two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25960231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elesianne/pseuds/Elesianne
Summary: For years, Amárië has been dreaming of Finrod returning to her at sunset. She doesn't know whether it is foresight or hope until one day he does.
Relationships: Amarië/Finrod Felagund | Findaráto
Comments: 20
Kudos: 42
Collections: Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang 2020





	1. Sea-watch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rhapsody](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhapsody/gifts).



> This fic was written for Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang inspired by the art ([here](https://www.deviantart.com/rhapsodybrd/art/Nerdanel-853603277), and below) by [Rhapsody](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhapsody).
> 
> This takes place in the year 543 of First Age, between Eärendil arriving in Valinor and the host of the Valar departing for Beleriand.
> 
>  _Endor_ = the continent of Middle-earth in Quenya; _fëa_ = spirit/soul; _hröa_ = body. _Findaráto_ is Finrod's Quenya name.
> 
>  **Warning:** This fic is about an elf who canonically died and was reembodied. There is some discussion of his death but no details. I chose 'No Archive Warnings Apply' because the fic is not about the death nor does the character die during the story.

Amárië has come to the seashore again to watch the sunset. It is a habit left over from when the one she missed was on the other side of the sea, far east, and she would imagine what he might be doing there.

Yet she comes still every day though he is now in the twilight halls of awaiting, and waiting for him to return to her from there is as futile as was waiting for him to return from the east. Both are banned in the Doom of the Noldor that still holds.

Amárië chooses not to think of how Findaráto was – is – only one quarter Noldo, yet that quarter appears to have defined all that happened to him. Doom of the Noldor indeed.

She is not thinking about that tonight.

The sunset today is particularly glorious, slowly turning the sea and sky into liquid golden fire.

A few gulls circle the beach, their calls familiar and comforting. She has lived here by the sea, at the edges of the Falmari's second-largest town on the shore of Aman, for many years of the Sun now.

She sits down on the sand, leaning against the cliff face where it comes closest to the water. It has been a long day making preparations, yet working hard in pursuit of fulfilling a decision has brought with it a peace that she enjoys as she watches the sun sink behind the sea. Tomorrow she will begin packing; tonight she watches enjoys the gold and lilac and peach that the setting sun leaves in the shreds of clouds making their leisurely way across the sky.

It is more beautiful than any painting, this nightly farewell that Arien paints across the sky.

The evening gets colder quickly as the sun's power diminishes. Amárië digs her bare toes into the cooling sand and thinks that she really should have taken a warmer shawl with her if she intends to watch the sky until the colours the sun leaves behind fade to darkness. The seasons are changing, days shortening, the sunset hour coming earlier and earlier.

But this night the cool air only serves to make her sleepy sitting there in her usual place, leaning her back against a rock still warm with the day's sun.

She is roused from her drowsiness by the soft crunch of footsteps on the sand. She turns her head to the direction of the sound, surprised that someone has come to her lonely shore this late. Perhaps it is one of her brothers who still find it difficult to believe that she is just fine living here alone and thus come to check on her frequently. Or perhaps a child has attempted a late-evening dive from the cliffs and hurt themselves, and their family has come to fetch the healer.

Amárië stands up in case it is, and looks at the newcomer in the gently gathering dark.

It is not the familiar figure of either of her irritating, beloved brothers. It is a strong-looking man who walks straight but not stiff, the evening wind playing with his short pale-golden hair worn loose. He is wearing simple white robes and cloak that the sunset leaves rose-stained. Amárië recognises him and then realises that she must have slipped into Lórien's sometimes-treacherous realm after all.

She has seen Findaráto in so many dreams. Some of them were true, dreams of far sight granted to her by Irmo out of mercy for one who serves his lady wife. Those dreams showed her some of what happened to him in the faraway lands, but most were born out of her wishes and desires, ones that she is not certain will ever come true.

This is one those wishful dreams where her beloved comes back to her happy and whole. He always walks slowly towards her and she drinks in the sight of him: his beloved dear face, long-fingered hands whose touch she so sorely misses, his sure gait that was never a sign of false pride but of his simple certainty in himself. Always in these dreams, as he gets close, they both smile and reach out to each other, not quite capable of waiting to touch until the second a few seconds away when he will arrive by her side.

But always, just as their outstretched fingers are about to meet, he fades to moonlight and disappears.

These dreams have come to her much more rarely ever since he died, only a few times, and Amárië is grateful for it. She finds it difficult to go back to living her life in the morning if during the night she has lost her dead beloved all over again.

This dream is different from all the others. Findaráto does not smile at her, and he does not walk slowly at all, striding instead swiftly towards her, slowing down only as he gets very close. His hair is strangely short.

And he does not reach out his hand for hers.

Amárië feels paralysed by the differences from all her earlier dreams and the disturbing, unacceptable fact that this does not feel like a dream. Never in a wishful dream has she felt so acutely the cool sand on her toes, nor has she felt so trembling and uncertain. And never before has his behaviour changed.

She stares at him, and in the gentle last light of the sun setting he is the same as she has always known him, and yet completely different. She wants to call out his name but finds that something strangles her throat so that she cannot speak. It must be the almost-regret she is beginning to feel, the regret that she should be seeing him again when he must inexorably be taken away from her.

He doesn't speak either, or not until he is standing in front of her, closer than he has ever gotten before. He looks at her just as intently as she is looking at him.

'Amárië.' His voice is so familiar, yet rougher than she remembers it usually being, as if he, too is filled with so much emotion that it is caught in his throat. He says her name again. 'Amárië.'

She does not touch him, even though every fibre of her being yearns to. She does not want him to disappear quite yet.

She can think of a thousand things, and none, that she wants to say to him, but what comes out of her mouth is, 'You are dead.' Her voice is broken. 'You are dead and doomed to stay dead, so this must be a dream, and you will disappear as soon as we touch. And I will wake up alone and colder than I was when I fell to sleep.'

'No', he says gently and reaches out to take her hand. She tries to back off and keep him from touching her, but she is too slow for him. So she closes her eyes, not wanting to see the moment he turns into wind and vanishes.

But then – he actually takes her hand in his, she can feel the warmth, she can feel him moving closer to him and murmuring her name as he gathers her in his arms, more hesitant than he ever was before he left.

Incredulous and dazed, she gasps for breath against his chest even as she puts her arms around him, too, finally daring to touch him. She holds him to her as tightly as she can, her eyes still closed. He feels more muscled than the last time he held her.

'This is not a dream', Findaráto says, relief in his voice. 'I am not going to leave you. Not unless you want me to.'

Amárië takes a step back, and he lets go of her at once. Not wanting him to misunderstand her – for she does not want him to leave again, not though she has found it difficult to forgive him for leaving Aman – she takes his hands in both of hers.

'How?' she asks. 'Your father told me that in his Doom Námo said that all who continued on the journey would find little pity when they enter his Halls. We understood that there would be no re-embodiment for you.' _And we wept, all of us for all of you_ , she does not add.

Findaráto smiles but it is not one his bright, light smiles that she loved so. 'The Valar have more pity for the Noldor who rebelled and spilled the blood of our kin than Námo prophesied or indeed the Noldor believed, it seems.'

' _You_ did not slay or hurt your mother's people.'

'And that was likely one of the reasons why Námo released me.' Findaráto's voice goes a little wry, more like is always was when making fun of someone. 'He did not deem it necessary to give me a list of reasons. He simply told me that my time in his Halls had come to its fruition, and sent me on my way. I did not protest; if I had he might have recalled me.'

She wants to ask how it was, the grey Halls, but that is not something she should ask. 'Did you want to leave?' she asks instead.

'I did.' Findaráto shivers. 'Being a _fëa_ only, a _fëa_ unfettered from my _hröa_ that I had felt being torn apart –' his words break like a wave on the shore, and gather again. 'Whether because I was torn in two, or because of the things that I did and the things that happened in my life, I needed time to heal and there was healing for me in his Halls.

'But I did yearn for my body like Mandos said he would, in that grim Doom he spoke to us when it wasn't too late to turn back. In the end I begged to be given my body, and against my expectations my prayer was answered. He made me anew and opened the door to the light of Aman.

'And my father was there', Findaráto continues, 'and my mother. You weren't, Amárië.'

'I didn't know', she breathes. 'No one told me. No one sent word. I have been here every day, here in my cottage by the sea, like I have been for the last two hundred years. They could have sent word.'

'We are not married.' For the first time since he came to her, Findaráto looks out to the darkening sea and not her.

It has always been a little disconcerting, even to her, Findaráto's habit of looking steadily, without pause, in the eyes of the person he's talking to.

'We are not married', he repeats. 'We were only barely engaged when I left, and I did not know – my parents did not know – if you would have wanted to be there.'

Amárië goes to lift her right hand to wipe away her tears and realises that she is still holding his hand.

She lets go.

'I would have', she says.

The wind blows in from the sea, not cold but cool. She looks out to the horizon. The glowing gold that gave way to softer peach and pink has all faded away, the sky now a deepening blue covered in dark-lavender wisps of cloud.

She remembers why they were apart – the ineliminable reasons, their inescapable differences – and she remembers deciding, when she got word of his death, that if he ever comes back she will welcome him in her arms should he still want to claim his place there.

He did, but now he looks at her in a way that makes her feel there is more distance between them than the few steps that they stand apart.

'Are we still betrothed, Amárië?' His gaze flicks to her right hand. 'You are not wearing my ring.'

'I wore it until the day I heard of your passing to the Halls.' Her mouth is dry. 'Did your parents not tell you?'

'My father said that we should discuss our relationship ourselves.' Findaráto's beautiful lips tug into a smile. 'You are the only thing, only person, that he did not tell me the recent history of.'

'I am glad that they were there for you', Amárië says. 'When you came back.'

'As am I. We stayed in Valinor for a time, and on Taniquetil with my grandmother and her kin. I got used to my body again and walked under the trees that bloom on the holy mountain just as they used to, and we talked of all that has happened, and we were silent together. And then I came to you.'

His white clothes and his eyes and his hair shine silver in the darkness that is creeping in as the lavender in the sky fades.

'You did not answer my question. Are we still betrothed, Amárië who appears to have been as faithful to me as I was to her?'

Amárië looks at the sky, at the evening star just coming to view. Eärendil is beginning his nightly journey. She is not quite yet used to it, this new star.

'We are if we want to be', she says to her beloved. 'Marriages must be redone, re-vowed, when one or both of the spouses return from death; betrothals too.' And she knows that it is what he has been asking the whole time and, from the way he looks at her, what is his answer.

It has grown cold on the beach. Amárië takes Findaráto's hand again.

'Let us go to my house', she says. 'Let us talk more; and I have the ring you gave me there.'

He smiles. His smile is the sun rising again, Amárië's world filling with light, blinding her to all else until she has to turn away from him and tug his hand so he follows her to the steps carved into the cliff on top of which her little house stands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **The fic continues in chapter 2.**


	2. The house on the rock

It is still strange, having Findaráto near her and wanting her after so long with him far away after he decided to follow other desires of the heart. His eyes are different now: bright and blue still, but half-hiding half-healed sorrows that Amárië knows little about and probably cannot understand. Yet his smile is the same.

His lips too, though they have not kissed so she does not know for sure.

They go up the stairs, she first and he close behind her.

'Be careful', she says to him over her shoulder. 'The stones are slippery. It rained in the afternoon.'

And then she feels silly. He has faced and survived worse than slippery steps.

But he says, 'I will.'

They come to the top of the cliff. Amárië opens the gate to the garden, and they walk the little path paved with sea-smoothed stones that winds its way between neat beds of flowers and herbs to the door of the small stone cottage.

'This is your home?' Findaráto asks, though he must know since he came here in search of her.

'For many years now', she says over her shoulder.

Findaráto looks around. 'I like your garden', he says. 'It is more fragrant than the gardens you grew when we were young. Even after the sun has set.'

She smiles, half-bitter and half-delighted at the memories of those gardens. 'This one is useful in a different way', she says. 'More herbs and fewer vegetables. And fewer flowers.'

'But some flowers, still.'

Amárië looks back. Findaráto has stopped to examine a sunflower almost as tall as he is, soon to bloom.

He flashes her a smile that is as much a memory of their shared youth than their words were, more carefree and glad without heaviness than he has seemed so far. 'You always were the kind of girl whom I saw as surrounded by flowers even when there were none there in your hands or your hair.'

'I see that you still have a way with words, Findaráto', she says, and then, because she never truly minded his silver tongue, 'Thank you. I do love flowers.'

She opens the door to her cottage where there indeed is a vase of flowers on every table. 'Come on in, Findaráto.'

It feels absurd, welcoming him into her own house. When he left, she lived still in her parents' home, a dutiful high-born daughter who followed closely all the constraints for unmarried daughter that the Vanyar and Noldor had had time to come up with during the blissful years of treelight.

Now she lays her shawl on the back of the worn chair she always sits in and asks her beloved-returned-from-the-dead, 'Are you hungry? I could make a light supper.'

'No, thank you. I am not hungry.'

Findaráto stops to take in the room: the simple furniture, the rows of smaller and bigger vials and pots on their shelves, her large healer's satchel hanging from its hook on the wall close to the door where she can grab it quickly. The vase of flowers on the table.

He smiles at that. Then he reminds, 'You said you had my ring here.'

'I do. I kept it safe though I could not wear it after I heard of your death. Well', she says, 'if you are not hungry, I will still make us tea.' She walks to the kitchen. It has windows to the sea, as do most of the rooms. She likes seeing the sky, ever-changing above the sea during the day and constant with its beloved stars at night.

Findaráto follows her to the kitchen.

'I am not thirsty either, Amárië.' He says it gently and looks at her in that way of his, like he can see right through her, and says, 'I would rather continue the discussion we began on the beach.'

'I understand, but I wish to make tea anyway.' She pulls on her apron. 'I am fussing about practical things because… I suppose I am feeling off-balance. It is strange, having you here suddenly, though you could not be more welcome.'

As she speaks, Amárië busies her hands and half her thoughts with the familiar ritual of making tea. It calms her down and grounds her. She first knew that Findaráto was the one for her by the way he made her body restless, something that no other male friend of hers ever did.

Without that one thing, which had appeared as the two of them grew from childhood to adolescence and intensified as they reached adulthood, she might have thought them just unusually close friends, that she admired his beauty the same way everyone else did.

He replies to her last remark, 'Surely I could be more welcome in your house. If I had never chosen to leave just after asking you to marry me.' His flippant tone has a brittle edge to it.

Like her, he is not quite as at easy with their reunion as he seems. Not as much as he wants to be, Amárië suspects. She knows she isn't.

'Or I could have come with you.' Amárië pulls up a chair for herself and the second one in the kitchen for Findaráto, facing hers; if they are both feeling off-balance, it might be better to sit for this conversation while the water for the tea boils.

They sit down.

'There are so many things we should talk about', Amárië says. 'What you have done, and I, while we were separated, and what we are going to do.'

'And about our separation itself. There is sorrow in your eyes, Amárië who has been my faithful beloved since the days when we were children growing up together in the gold and silver light, and some of it is the same sorrow that you bore when we said our goodbyes.

'Can you forgive me for leaving?' he asks, his voice rough in a way she has rarely heard it.

'Can you forgive me for staying?' she replies.

He shakes his head. 'I never blamed you for it. You saw, and so did you father, that it would not end well for you if you came with me. I understand why he forbade you to come, and why you obeyed.'

She shakes her head too, as if to stay, _I didn't blame you either_ , and also to dispel the memory of the flames in her dream of foresight that still scares her though she saw it hundreds of years ago, and never again after she decided to stay.

'I understood your decision too, though it hurt', she says to Findaráto. 'I didn't want to understand, perhaps, but I did. You always wanted more than the fields and woods and towns of Valinor; you always were an explorer and this land too narrow for you, with too many lords who had laid claim to it before you were born.

'And I wanted to tend my gardens that I treasured, loving the familiar. We always were a strange couple. It is no wonder, really, that we courted for years and didn't marry.' She takes a deep breath. 'If almost all of my other emotions, and perhaps my better sense, were not overwhelmed by the joy of your return, I would worry still about whether we can be happy together.' She laughs, rather against her will. 'And here we are, about to be engaged again only an hour after being reunited, and we have not even kissed.'

'That is easily remedied, and I would happily do it', Findaráto replies, and, 'Amárië, in the last five hundred years of my first life, I was a traveller, an explorer, a builder, a king, a warrior. Now, if you will have me, in my second life I shall be a husband, and, if we may have even more blessings than a life together, a father.'

She tries to speak, to tell him of her plans that she will not lay aside even for his sake, but he continues, words pouring out of him and sounding like something long-forethought but not without passion.

'I rested in Mandos for most of the years that I was there, healing of hurts and wrongs that had made my life harder to bear in its latter years, but I am tired still; among other things, tired of glory. For glory, it turns out, comes with blood and loss and heartbreak of many different kinds.

'Even if I recover more, I do not think I shall desire for more of it. I want to settle down with you, Amárië, help tend your gardens and keep up your house – your gutters need redoing, I noticed – and write down the stories of Endor that I heard or experienced.'

There is a veil of quiet tears before her eyes but she says as briskly as she can, 'The core of your _fëa_ is the same as it ever was, Findaráto, I can tell, and you will not be content being just the husband of the local healer, living a quiet little life. You will want to wander, still, and make beautiful things, and make friends with new people.'

'Perhaps. Most likely.' Sitting up straighter in his chair, Findaráto smiles, looking more rakish than ever with his short hair flopping over his eyes. It is just long enough to do that. 'But I will be content with wandering the extent of Aman, and building us a bigger house, and getting to know the local community and visiting my family and relatives. I do not need to go back to Endor, nor could I. That ocean is uncrossable to me now.'

Amárië has to wipe her eyes. 'I am glad, truly, my love, my darling, that you want to live that life with me.'

Findaráto speaks so fairly, his words dearer than diamonds or pearls to her, and she wants nothing more than to welcome him into her life. He would make perfect the quiet, purposeful life she has lived here in this Falmarin town, serving the community as their healer.

'Then what is wrong? Amárië, _my_ darling, I can tell that something is wrong. Do you still have doubts about whether we can be happy together? I truly believe so. It is what I desire now, and it is not an impulsive passion born out of the joy of seeing you again. It is what I have desired since I came back to myself in the silent ever-twilight of Mandos where all things became clear.'

'No, I do not doubt that.' Not anymore, anyway. She could often tell when he was being sincere even when he couldn't, and he is sincere now. She feels it in both his words and his spirit that is beginning, tentatively, gently, to reach out to hers.

'But I am not staying here', Amárië must say, her heart aching in that same way that it did before the Sun and the Moon were on the sky, and Findaráto said these same words to her. 'I am already packing to leave.'

Findaráto's face falls. 'To the war across the sea, with the Valar and the Vanyar, to my war that I lost. I thought, perhaps – since you had lived among the Falmari for years, and they are not going save for their sailors. And you are no warrior.'

'I am of the faithful Vanyar, Findaráto my love, though I have dwelled among elves of another tribe for a while now. And few of my people are fierce-hearted like the Noldor but they are finally going to the war in Endor in the host of the Valar. Since the High Ones have decided to help the elves and other peoples still struggling there, the Vanyar will march as their army.

'And I am not a warrior, I know that well, but I am a healer – though I have not had time to tell you so – and healers will be needed where warriors go. You must know that well.'

'I know. And I knew you were a healer as soon as I saw your garden.' Findaráto's smile is fond; proud? 'I knew many healers in Endor; indeed, as you say, healers are needed wherever warriors go.

'And I know the value of them, and I am glad that you are one; and proud, though it is hardly my place. I hope you'll tell me how you came to be one, though I must admit that I am more desperate to hear what your going to Endor means for the two of us.'

'What do you think it should mean?' Amárië asks.

Findaráto cocks his head. 'You know, I think the water is boiling.'

'Findaráto!' The half-laughing, half-frustrated reproach feels familiar on her tongue.

Findaráto smiles at her, softer now. 'I think that it means that there is a chance that I will be the one to welcome you back from the Halls next, for war is dangerous even for a healer. And if I should be there for you at those grey gates, I would have us have marriage vows to redo after that rather than a betrothal.'

Amárië lets out a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. 'I quite agree', she says, for doubt has faded from her heart and only love remains, that enduring love that for centuries has still pulsed with every beat of her heart

'Shall we begin with a kiss?' she asks. 'To do things in the right order, at least, if perhaps not at the right time.'

'How sensible of us to begin with a kiss, indeed. Kisses are serious things that must be taken seriously.' He stands up and takes Amárië's hand, and before she knows it she is standing in the circle of his arms, that heart-achingly familiar place.

She raises her hands to his face. The chin length of his hair is not familiar, but his locks are as sweetly wavy and soft as always. As she sinks her hands into them and scratches his scalp very gently, he closes his eyes in bliss. Some things never change, it seems, though this is not the body that she first learned to touch.

That is too strange and painful a thought so she pushes it out of her mind, and closes the little distance between them to kiss him.

And, oh, this is the same too, only made sweeter by being parted from him for so long. His lips feel the same, he tastes the same, sounds the same when he moans as she nips at his lower lip ever so gently.

Yet Amárië finds herself growing desperate, too, jittery and holding on to him too tight, making their teeth clash as she kisses him to the point of breathlessness; because they are going to be separated, again.

Findaráto pulls away a hair's breadth and whispers, 'Darling', against her lips. His voice is wet, and his eyes, when she lifts her gaze to him.

'Darling,' she echoes.

And he gentles her with another kiss, and she him with soft touches up and down his sides. They lean their foreheads together and breathe each other in.

It doesn't take long for tears to fade, and the thought of making tea from Amárië's mind. In Findaráto's kisses there is all the passion and love and care she could ever hope for, making warmth and heat coil inside her and the room around her spin and then disappear.

When she once again grows breathless she pulls away from him with one final little nip of his lower lip, and she goes to take the boiling kettle away from the stove, and she takes his hand again.

'Come, my love, the silver ring you gave me and the golden one I had made for you are in my bedroom.' As he follows, sweetly biddable as he always is when it suits him, it occurs to her to ask, 'Or did you have new rings made for me?'

'I did not', he says as she picks up a lit candle from the main room and they cross the threshold to the bedroom. 'I did not want to be presumptuous. Not in this matter.' He swallows and continues, 'I made a ring of gold for you in Endor in the hope that you would one day follow me there and be my wife, my queen, though some part of me knew that you would not. I lost it in the filthy dark place where I died, and the silver ring you gave me, Amárië. Another loss I grieved in the Halls.'

Oh, now her eyes prickle with tears again. What a betrothal day this is! 'It is no matter', she tells him. 'They are just objects. What they represent you did not leave behind in that dark place.'

'No, I did not. Did you know', he asks with a surprising bitter chuckle, 'that that place was the dungeon of a tower that I build myself? My beautiful, white-walled Minas Tirith on a beautiful little island in a sweetly rushing river that you would have liked. I built the watchtower but couldn't keep it, and now it is my grave.'

His eyes are tired and far away.

'Yet you are here, my love', Amárië reminds him, strengthening her words with the power she learned in the quiet garden of Lórien from Estë and her grey-clad Maiar on the shore of the lake Lórellin.

She takes his hand again and says, 'You have healed of much and will heal more, I know, of your formidable spirit. And you are here and with me, and it does not matter that you have no wedding ring for me. That is not important. Only our love and our intentions are.'

He squeezes her hand and now there is something like wonder in his eyes. 'You are indeed a healer of hurts', he says. 'I was very silly, Amárië, I must confess. I thought that coming back to you, I would find you just the same as when I left. But you are almost as much changed as I am.'

'Not as much as you, I am certain. Not nearly as much happened to me. But I did decide... having lost you and having seen all the grief among our peoples here in Aman, I decided to ask Estë that she would teach me what I could learn. I went to Lórien first because of my own hurt, small though it was compared to many others', and discovered that sometimes healing comes through helping others.'

She likes the way he looks at her now.

'I have the silver ring you gave me', she says to him. 'I would like to wear it, if you would give it to me again.'

'With joy.' His tiredness is gone, his inner fire flaring up again. She is glad to see it. 'And though we have no golden rings to give tonight?' he asks, the implication heavy in his voice, hot in the air between them.

This night of reunion for both betrothal and marriage is a little faster than Amárië expected, but why not? The night is blessed already.

So she says, 'Just as the rings do not truly matter, I do not feel the ceremony does either. I know that your parents like me, and my parents liked you…'

'– before I left you', he says dryly.

Amárië ignores him. 'They liked you, and they will again', she says. 'I do not care about festivities and gifts and such. Do you?'

'Not the least bit.' Findaráto laughs, radiant, and that mercurialness in him that always fascinated her on show again. 'Beloved, I would marry you dressed in rags and living in a cave. All I need, all we need, are the oaths and joining our bodies together.'

Amárië smiles, and it might be radiant, too. 'My little cottage and my healer's raiment are not quite that modest, but they will suffice too, then.' She hesitates for the last time. 'Are we hurrying too much, making this our day of betrothal and marriage both?'

Findaráto's reply is instant. 'We are finally not being too slow. Our courtship may be the longest in Aman.'

 _I think we needed the time_ , she thinks but doesn't say it. He is the one who came back through death.

She closes the door of the bedroom, leaving them in the dim-bright light of the one candle, in the small salty breeze blowing in from the open window.

She lets go of his hand to go to close the window and light more candles until every inch of the room is bright. She wants to see him in golden light: that is always how he shined most beautiful.

She turns to him, turns to him to stay with him, turns like her heart turned to him when they were still bright-eyed children splashing in Ingwë's fountains. He glows tall and heart-breakingly fair in the light of the candles in the small room.

'No more darkness', she tells him.

'Yes, my golden Amárië, my darling, my joy among sorrows', he says, and the power in him was always such that when he says something like that she feels it in the marrow of her bones.

'No more darkness', he repeats.


End file.
